More freedom in education

Our main goal?More freedom in education

Steiner Waldorf education is best delivered in flexible education systems that promote freedom and educational choice.

Our work

Fol­low­ing our rec­om­men­da­tions, the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment adopt­ed amend­ments to its 2018 report, “Mod­erni­sa­tion of edu­ca­tion in the EU”. These amend­ments pro­mote par­ents being able to choose their children’s school, free­dom to estab­lish inde­pen­dent schools, and pub­lic fund­ing for inde­pen­dent non-prof­it schools.

We were also involved in the draft­ing of the report, “Euro­pean ideas for bet­ter learn­ing”, pro­duced by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion ET 2020 Work­ing Group Schools in April 2018. Our inter­ven­tion ensured that the needs of the inde­pen­dent school sec­tor are bet­ter reflect­ed in the report (see p3-4 of the report for more details).

Vision

Our vision is for Stein­er Wal­dorf edu­ca­tion to thrive in Europe.

This means flex­i­ble rules gov­ern­ing edu­ca­tion sys­tems, which allow dif­fer­ent teach­ing approach­es and types of school to peace­ful­ly coex­ist.

Gov­ern­ments should lim­it them­selves to ensur­ing edu­ca­tion­al qual­i­ty and defin­ing a gen­er­al frame­work of learn­ing out­comes. Schools should be able to enjoy full auton­o­my and free­dom in how they meet these stan­dards.

Freedom for parents to choose a school

Accord­ing to Arti­cle 14 of the EU Char­ter of Fun­da­men­tal Rights, the right to edu­ca­tion includes the right of par­ents to ensure their children’s edu­ca­tion is in accor­dance with their reli­gious, philo­soph­i­cal, and ped­a­gog­i­cal beliefs. We encour­age nation­al and region­al gov­ern­ments to ensure par­ents from all finan­cial back­grounds can ful­ly exer­cise this right.

Freedom for schools to define their own curricula

All schools in Europe should have the right to define their own cur­ric­u­la.
Over­ly detailed nation­al cur­ric­u­la reduce the poten­tial for schools and teach­ers to inno­vate. These should be replaced by gen­er­al objec­tives and learn­ing out­comes guid­ing school-based cur­ric­u­la design.

In the “Mod­erni­sa­tion of edu­ca­tion in the EU” report, the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment high­lights the ben­e­fits of school auton­o­my, affirm­ing that “grant­i­ng schools more auton­o­my regard­ing cur­ric­u­la, assess­ment and finance has been shown to result in increased pupil per­for­mance” (sec­tion 42, page 11, 2008).

Freedom requires public funding for independent schools

To increase inclu­sive­ness and ensure free­dom of edu­ca­tion­al choice, there should be full pub­lic fund­ing for inde­pen­dent edu­ca­tion across all Euro­pean coun­tries. We par­tic­u­lar­ly encour­age nation­al and region­al gov­ern­ments to imple­ment sec­tion 76 of the report, which “encour­ages… the pro­vi­sion of ade­quate finan­cial sup­port for schools of all cat­e­gories and lev­els, both state schools and not-for-prof­it pri­vate schools” (sec­tion 76, page 14, 2018).